Mice Play in VR

Virtual Reality always seemed like a technology just out of reach, much like nuclear fusion, the flying car, or Linux on the desktop. It seems to be gaining steam in the last five years or so, though, with successful video games from a number of companies as well as plenty of other virtual reality adjacent technology that seems to be picking up steam as well like augmented reality. Another sign that this technology might be here to stay is this virtual reality headset made for mice.

These aren’t any ordinary pets out to take a pleasant jaunt through VR, though. These are lab mice from Cornell University that are helping to study various various aspects of neuroscience and behavior. The tiny headset is based on a Raspberry Pi and uses two small SPI-based displays with special lenses chosen and mounted specifically for a mouse’s field-of-view. The mouse will run on a Styrofoam ball that is attached to a separate set of sensors that can measure aspects of its motion.

While the project is still a work in progress, it’s an interesting solution to what would otherwise be a difficult problem to solve when studying mice in a laboratory setting. The team responsible for this effort has made their project available to the public as well and is asking for some help developing it, which can be found at the project’s GitHub page. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen rodents interacting with a virtual world, either. Who could forget this cryptocurrency-trading hamster?